Emily Post for the digital generation.

Be conservative in what you generate and liberal in what you accept

April 13th, 2005 | Category: General

There’s nothing quite like keeping an etiquette blog to make you feel like a fraud.

I just started a new job back home in Australia, and realised how much I love arguing with Australian geeks. If there’s a geek tendency to say “NO THAT’S WRONG” without any attempt at politeness, it goes double on this continent. Perhaps it’s just reaction from leaving Canada (where, as you know, everyone is unfailingly courteous (that’s sarcasm, son)), or perhaps it’s that I spent a month sleeping on a borrowed mattress that made me ache all over, but it’s just so hard not to pick fights. Coding style! Editor wars! You name it. For the first time in years I can lock horns with people who, well, quite frankly, people who will beat me to a pulp. I’m not going to win any of these arguments. But it just feels so damn good.

I am a bad, bad, etiquette writer.

So I was thinking the other day about the old maxim:

Be conservative in what you generate and liberal in what you accept.

It occurs to me that this applies as much to interpersonal relationships as it does to software. I could go on about this for a few paragraphs, but here’s hoping I don’t need to. You’re smart. Draw the analogy yourself.

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1 Comment so far

  1. Marna April 13th, 2005 9:45 pm

    *nods* The thing about that is how context-dependant that is. It’s not rude among people who all enjoy it. In fact, nothing is rude among people who all enjoy it.

    I mean, I just spent a weekend doing that; people do it in university departments as well. Not with QUITE the aggression geek cultures can display, but when you’re there to think and problem-solve it’s expected that everyone will play hard.

    The trick is to remember that it’s not broadly acceptable, and for many geeks, that’s hard.

    I see the more problematic sort of behaviour, less than I used to I admit, among people whose careers began during the “90+ hours but you get your laundry done” period of the dot-com boom. They went from the total environment of university to work in a total environment; meaning they practically lived at work and their social life was their co-workers. And so really, they had to learn later that multiple modes of behaviour were required.

    Does that make sense?

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